Treading Dangerous Ground

[KumaAkuma]

Yeah that sounds about right.

Offtopic: In general I think they really go overboard with changes (Like the battle system). A lot of things could have been solved just by doing some balancing / making some adjustments, instead they throw out the baby with the bathwater and restart from scratch. And still no fine-tuning! It's just one systems that's "meh" replaced by another system that's "meh" (with the added excuse "It's new. Give it some time."

[Noir]

I can't help but wonder if, the day he got on here and read all the negative feedback about his plan, he wasnt kicking himself for no having done so then. Like I said though, it is the potential for this sort of trend in desicion making to become more common that concerns me. As to the actual server merger issue itself, I could care less. I am on Kashuan for gods sake, I would have gladly taken ANY of those options and been pleased my server has been a freaking ghost town since last year.



Well, when would you like to voice your concern over this sort of trend exactly? Maybe we should wait until they do it again and its to late to stop it over something much more serious next time? I am sorry, but this is an MMO, and to me, player population IS a gameplay issue. This isn't a single player RPG man. I pay a monthly fee to play as part of a community, not sit around Kashuan with only 15 other people talking about the first 2 weeks of the game when we had a few thousand people on our server like it was the good ol days.


I got my percentage from the creative portion of my brain that makes up statistics when none are given to me. I am pretty sure I even say in the OP that that 5% is comepletely fictional because SE doesn't give out any numbers. However, the original player poll showed 10's of thousands of hits, and I can assure you there arent 10's of thousands of people that post on here, and all the other forums combined. In an ideal world, there would be and we could all have a pleasant discourse on the state of the game and discuss ideas we may not see eye-to-eye on without flaming the crap out of each other the way we do on here. But the is reality, and the reality is many people want nothing to do with these forums because either they dont use forums and blogging as a means to communicate, or they dont want to put up with a ton of ass clowns that want to call each other white Knights, trolls, and fanboys ever time they dont agree with a post. They shouldnt be ignored or punished by SE for not wanting to deal with some of the crap on these forums. And while I don't have numbers, I can assure you that 50% of the people that play this game DONT post on here.

I disagree. You don't need to check clowns here. But if you can't use the dev tracker and news main page, SE shouldn't give a rats about you. Plus, 50% uses it. I didn't say post only. But following the devs comments and reading whatever pops up. 50% is a pretty reasonable rate if not more.

[darkstarpoet1]

I disagree. You don't need to check clowns here. But if you can't use the dev tracker and news main page, SE shouldn't give a rats about you. Plus, 50% uses it. I didn't say post only. But following the devs comments and reading whatever pops up. 50% is a pretty reasonable rate if not more.

there is nowhere near 50% using it. on my entire server maybe 15 total people even keep up with anything this game does. that is lodestone, forums, and looking at other places online. if 1 out of 20 people on my server use the sites to keep up with the game they are playing what makes you think a higher percentage of people that do not play the game checks frequently?

i'd be willing to bet the % of people that actually keep up with what is going on instead of hearing it from others is alot closer to 5 than it is 50.

[NefarioCall]

I'm under the impression of what some other intelligent forum goer mentioned before me;
If you're in favor of option 4, then you must have no friends in this game.

[SirOleas]

I'm under the impression of what some other intelligent forum goer mentioned before me;
If you're in favor of option 4, then you must have no friends in this game.

I think that's overly simplistic to think.
Some people were/are just fine with option 4 period. They are confident they can move to a new server with their friends, or in the case that they don't have friends, it's a fresh start for them. But the downfalls to option 4 are very obvious once one puts aside how they feel and thinks about the entire picture.

For example: I am fine with option 4 because it presents me the option to move with my LS, which are the only important people to me on the game currently. However, it cannot be ignored that other players have many linkshells, some of which are very large making option 4 a nightmare. Option 2 throws a bone to those players, keeping parts of option 4 throws a bone to players in a more simple situation.

It's not about having no friends, or having a ton of them. It's about looking at the entire picture, not just your specific situation.

Let's get past the rather insulting assumption that everyone who likes option 4 is a complete loner/crazy/human hating player.

Lol

[Biggs]

I'm under the impression of what some other intelligent forum goer mentioned before me;
If you're in favor of option 4, then you must have no friends in this game.

Your forgetting those of us that occupy super low population servers (like mine) that would gladly take ANY of those 4 options over what we have now. Not to mention, how hard is it to say, "hey friends of mine, I am moving to server 6."? Thats pretty much what I said to the friends I play with on this as well as those taking a break, and with the exception of a few of them, each of them were just fine with that. If they don't want to move with you, then they won't be missed for very long. Thats besides the point though, this room shouldnt decend into a debate over which server merging option is the best. There is already 50 or more of those up and running.

[Biggs]

I disagree. You don't need to check clowns here. But if you can't use the dev tracker and news main page, SE shouldn't give a rats about you. Plus, 50% uses it. I didn't say post only. But following the devs comments and reading whatever pops up. 50% is a pretty reasonable rate if not more.

I would say thats a REALLY optimistic number man. Of the 50 or so folks in my old linkshell, only 5 or 6 of us looked up ANYTHING on the lodestone, the rest got their info from the few of us that would check it. Most of the time I would announce upcoming news found on these sites, most players in my ls were unaware.

[Northman]

I think Japanese players are a big majority and in this case they really got angry cause they are very social. Many of them wrote even first time to forums. So I think this was the reason to change. But it is true that more polls are needed and players sd be listened more. And simple reason is that in this game we all have been all time beta testers. And we are today. The forum posts are very valuable to the devs if they only would use their round organs near nose.

[syntaxlies]

Greatings Forum readers and devs! While I am aware that there are more than SEVERAL posts right now that deal with the current World Merger, I would like to start by saying that, while I will site that as an example, the purpose of this post is to discuss the use of these forums as a means to change the game as a whole, and why I believe that to be a mistake.

After posting the direction Yoshi had chosen to do the world merger, the forums lit up with people flaming the way it was to be done. Every individual that plays this game and pays a fee is TOTALLY entitled to their opinion, and no one should be able to say otherwise. That being said, I was very dismayed to see that the very next day, Yoshi made a post that hinted at flip flopping on using option 4 because it "appeared" that most people liked option 2. I am more than willing to acknowledge that a majority really would like option 2, however, using these forums as the SOLE basis to make a decision like that sets a very dangerous precedent. These forums and the people on them represent a VERY small percentage of the actual player base. So essentially, according to the statements made in his post, Yoshi will be using 5% (a fictional number since I actually don't have any numbers to go off of) of the player base to make a decision that effects the OTHER 95% percent of us.

I feel that the fair way to make large decisions that effect the entire community as whole when asking for input is to use the player polls they have used in the past, and only those polls. These polls don't require you to be a member of any particular guild or forum, the only requirement is that you are a paying customer of their product. The polls have you check from a selection of options that COMPLETELY take emotion out of the equation. While I know that the dev team hopes to conduct a merge by march, and that, regardless of anything we say, they may be moving forward with that, I can only hope that in the future, when making decisions that affect the entire community, they use a fair and neutral tool to do so. It was my understanding that the direction the game is heading now is a direct reflection of the polls that have already been taken, and I can only hope that they will continue to shape the game in this method. While I certainly agree that these forums are a great tool to recieve and answer questions and concerns of the community, they should never be used to make large scale decisions that affect a much larger portion of the player base.

I would like to take the time to thank anyone that has read this lengthy post, and once again, I would like to thank the dev team for putting all of their heart and soul into making this the game we all want it to be. (Especially since it seems to be effecting some of their health in a very negative matter. That, more than anything, shows me how hard they must be working to turn this game around.)

Thanks again,
Biggs

Edit- The post I am citing by Yoshi P can be found on page 16 of this thread:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...004#post549004

hmm, im not sure if listening to the negative outcry of the community and coming up with a plan that benefits everyone would be considered dangerous ground. In fact id say coming up with a have ass plan and telling the community to deal with it might be more dangerous.

[Forte]

Totally Off topic: Hey Biggs After the Dev figure out what there doing to appease EVERYONE (lol) what server are you going to go to if you pick and if not and they change to 2 merging into one mind if me and turt move to yours or you at us would be nice to have people we know

On topic: I can see how the forums would be bad and a good thing. I can see them being a good means to judge an idea or a concept (kind of like a verbal test server). The only thing is the forums are only a limited view of players so shouldn't be consulted 100% and if so they need to add in game polls to make it so everyone has a voice for fairness. Other then the lack of fairness it seems nice to actually have a voice in the making of a game you play.

Now for the down side I dont want the creativeness of the Dev's to be limited to are unwilling to try new things or ideas just because its hard to do or understand. It is there game not ours they should have final and total say and if people are to busy arguing of something it binds up the Devs on one issue instead of moving on to other issues we want or they want too fix.

All in all I want them to take are opinions and listen to them and mold a game we can enjoy but dont listen to every loud mouth forum troll that wants this or that changed just because they dont like it or cant get use to how it works.